


The Dreams of Will Graham

by berlynn_wohl



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Lovecraftian, M/M, Metafiction, Pastiche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 18:13:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6205504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/pseuds/berlynn_wohl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hannibal/Lovecraft crossover I never wrote. :(</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dreams of Will Graham

**Author's Note:**

> I got the idea for a Hannibal/Lovecraft crossover back in 2014. I knew it would be a lengthy and plot-heavy fic, which is not my strong suit, so I wrote a two-page summary of everything I had in mind, with the intention of using it as a guide for writing the fic itself.
> 
> Unfortunately, I fell into the trap of writing a summary that was so detailed, it satisfied my desire to write the actual fic. So the summary sat around for almost two years, and I did nothing with it…
> 
> …until I picked up a book called Missing Links and Secret Histories (L. Timmel Duchamp, editor), a collection of short stories based on real fiction, each of which is written in Wikipedia format; i.e., each "Wikipedia entry" is about an apocryphal version of a real-life piece of literature (so, it’s fanfic!). This book gave me the idea to write a fake Wikipedia entry for my own never-finished fic, so that I might at least share the summary. So, that’s what this is.

 

**The Dreams of Will Graham**

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

“The Dreams of Will Graham” is a short story by [Berlynn Wohl](http://berlynn-wohl.tumblr.com/), first published in 2016.

 

 **Contents** [[hide](http://berlynnsherlock.livejournal.com/)]

* * *

  1. Plot
  2. Excerpt
  3. The Author
  4. Reception
  5. References
  6. Further Reading



 

 

 **Plot** [[edit](http://berlynnwohl.deviantart.com/gallery/)]

* * *

The story begins with Will Graham working homicide for the New Orleans Police Department. He is overcome, seemingly without provocation, by a strange amnesia. This amnesia lasts for five years, during which time he is (so he is later told by those who knew him) not himself, but after which he seems to return to normalcy, and is allowed back at his old job.  
   
However, he returns to his life feeling oddly changed. He has frighteningly vivid dreams, so detailed and loaded with sensation that they feel like they might actually be memories. In these dreams, he wanders amongst primordial foliage, as well as cyclopean architecture covered in unfamiliar sigils.   
  
In his waking hours, Will sometimes feels a sense of dread at the prospect of looking at himself in a mirror. When he does glimpse himself, he feels relieved at what he sees, as though he’d expected to catch sight of something much more dreadful.   
  
Will tries to keep these new feelings to himself, but he nearly reveals them to his colleagues by accident when he has a vision at a crime scene. Somehow, he is able to see the crime as it takes place, to perceive the killer’s methods, and sometimes, by extension, to understand their motives. 

He uses this new gift several times at crime scenes before his stellar record of results attracts the attention of the FBI. Jack Crawford recruits Will to work for him, to provide insight into the most gruesome and mysterious of crimes. Will continues to keep the true nature of his gift hidden by excusing his insights as simply “interpreting the evidence.”   
  
Will cannot pass the psychological examinations that would allow him to be a legitimate FBI agent. In order to be allowed to keep Will working for him, Jack must prove that Will remains perfectly sane and healthy, so he brings in Hannibal Lecter to psychoanalyze him and give him a clean bill of health.

Hannibal asks Will to describe his visions. Will explains all about his amnesia episode, his dreams, and so on. Hannibal recognizes Will’s descriptions from other tales he has heard, both contemporary and from various points in history. After consulting some of these reports and legends, Hannibal finds Will’s experience consistent with them, although Will seems to have a greater ability to project himself forward or backward in time with precision, rather than being a passive recipient of these strange dreams and memories.   
  
Thus, Hannibal understands precisely what happened to Will – that his mind was commandeered by the Great Race – but elects not to say anything on the matter. He knows that Will must come to his own understanding of the Great Race, and of the Great Old Ones, and of all the things that ordinary humans mind are mercifully unable to comprehend.

Hannibal nudges Will towards an understanding of his visions, in the course of which Will also becomes dimly aware of Hannibal’s possible connection to them. When he is a guest at one of Hannibal’s dinners, Will notices an idol tucked away on a shelf in his home, between several hidebound tomes of ancient lore, and recognizes the being that it represents from his dreams. Additionally, Hannibal shows Will some of his drawings, which are indisputably beautiful and demonstrate unmatched skill, but which Will also finds strangely disquieting; the more he looks at them, the more the shapes don’t seem to match up, the more the subject of the drawing seems somehow misaligned.

Before Hannibal can sign his letter to Jack confirming that Will is competent to work for the FBI, he must accompany Will into the field. He travels with Will to rural Massachusetts – portrayed in this story as a land of blasted heaths and unsettlingly symmetrical mountaintops – to investigate a string of murders. Upon arrival at the hotel that the FBI has booked for them, they find that their room features only one bed. Hannibal offers to sleep on the floor, to which the clerk replies, in an oddly droning voice, “I wouldn't recommend sleeping on the floor, sirs, not with the spider problem we’ve had lately.”   
  
Will and Hannibal’s investigation proceeds. The killer is leaving the bodies of their victims in a little valley that was once inhabited but has long been abandoned, and based on his conversations with the locals, Will suspects it is actually an attempt to delay new construction over the area. The killer seems to know, Will and Hannibal agree in a discussion they have about the murders, that it would be a very bad idea to build there.  
  
Soon after, a flood causes the bodies of several dozen partially-decomposed bodies to surface in a gully, far from any cemetery but quite near the valley where the killer deposits his bodies. The FBI sends a forensics team to handle the situation. Afterward, when reviewing the reports from the various members of the team who were present, Will notices that no one seems to be able to agree on the simplest facts, such as angles, colors, distances, or depths. Even the number of bodies taken away for examination is in dispute.

While tracking down documents from the last hundred years about strange goings-on in the area, Will realizes that reports came from people passing through the area, not residents. No one who lives in this area has ever called the authorities when an odd event occurred. Hannibal suggests to Will that these people would rather not attract attention to the community.

Desperate for answers, Will resorts to using his ability to project himself into the past, and at last all is revealed: the locals are the descendants of the Great Race who, until then, had remained sufficiently isolated and hidden from humankind. Will’s new understanding of the Great Old Ones pleases Hannibal, but Will finds it difficult to cope with this revelation.

Will and Hannibal must stay one more night in the town before returning to Baltimore. That night, they hear strange skitterings around their door, and outside their window, strange howls in the distance. But when the sun rises, Hannibal and Will, having kept an all-night vigil, never encounter the source of the sounds.  
  
At this point, Will accepts that there is nothing to be done about the locals, or the remains of their ancestors, because while the military could be called in to exterminate all evidence of visitation by the Great Race, that may only prompt more of them to arrive from their point of origin. Will convinces Jack Crawford to close the case.

Will continues, however, to use his ability to project himself in time at other, more mundane crime scenes. Doing so, he inadvertently draws the attention of the Hounds of Tindalos – which, it is discovered, he has been doing all along. Will has been safe up to this point because his projections only allowed him a sliver of a glimpse – they never dilated time enough to allow the Hounds to accurately locate him…at first. But as Jack pushes Will to project more and more often, the Hounds find him, and by the time Will realizes what has happened, it is far too late for him to escape.

Even Hannibal had not anticipated that the Hounds would take Will, and in the end he deeply regrets his decision to encourage Will to delve into that realm. His only recourse is to get his hands on a copy of the _Necronomicon_ , which details a method that Hannibal might employ to find Will and bring him back…

 

 

 **Excerpt** [[edit](http://berlynnwohl.deviantart.com/gallery/)]

* * *

 An excerpt from a scene involving Will and Hannibal in their small, shared small Massachusetts hotel room:

_Hannibal’s ravenous lust for Will seemed grim, if not entirely unholy. He thrust inexhaustibly into Will’s body, whispering to him all manner of dire, bestial thoughts, fragments of his wicked desires._

_Will received these aching whispers in the same manner with which he received Hannibal’s cock: furtively and with loose-syllabled wails. As Hannibal drove him yet further into an erotic delirium, Will was reduced to inhuman sounds of anguished pleasure, squirming and writhing like the monstrous shadows in his dream-world._

_Perhaps the only thing compelling them to create this exquisite heat between their bodies was the possibility of fending off the dreadful, tomb-like cold of the room, though the thick, musty odor of the old hotel would surely prevent them both from taking their minds entirely away from thoughts of decay and death._

 

 

 **The Author** [[edit](http://berlynnwohl.deviantart.com/gallery/)]

* * *

Berlynn Wohl is a well-respected and admired fanfic writer [CITATION NEEDED], who has been described as “a treasure” [1] and “10 pounds of fun in a 5 pound bag.” [2] 

 

 **Reception** [[edit](http://berlynnwohl.deviantart.com/gallery/)]

* * *

“The Dreams of Will Graham” was considered a middling success, drawing in fans of the genre known as “Cosmic-Horror Erotic Pastiche Fan Fiction,” but few besides that.

AO3 user welcome_to_warp_zone commented: “Lovely fic, though I wish it had fewer pointless sex scenes.” [3] 

AO3 user mayicallyou338 commented: “This fic was great, but I wish it had more pointless sex scenes.” [4] 

AO3 user internet_coke_machine commented, “I’m sorry, but I simply cannot speak positively of any fic inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, a man whose vile racism has gone sadly unexamined in the circles of speculative fiction, which continue to be dominated by white male apologists… Also, Hannibal was the top in this fic and I only read bottom!Hannibal. Author needs to tag.” [5] 

 

  
**References** [[edit](http://berlynnwohl.deviantart.com/gallery/)]

* * *

  1. http://the-mamishka.tumblr.com/post/137971688492/sherlock-seattle-mini-con-this-weekend
  2. http://likes-timelords.tumblr.com/post/139094237723/teapotsubtext-could-someone-please-write-a
  3. archiveofourown.org/comments/5E8840O
  4. archiveofourown.org/comments/538B9S79
  5. archiveofourown.org/comments/S41019B7



 

 

 **Further Reading** [[edit](http://berlynnwohl.deviantart.com/gallery/)]

* * *

  * [Berlynn Wohl on AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl)
  * [Berlynn Wohl on Tumblr](http://berlynn-wohl.tumblr.com/post/139816939363/cards-against-humanity-star-wars-original)



 

Categories: Slash fan fiction | Lovecraftian Horror | Fanworks on AO3


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